Sure, I had been making progress with the Democratic Party of Colorado.
A lifelong Democrat, I moved in 1988 to Colorado from California where
I had worked on Alan Cranston's final campaign in 1986. I became active
in the Jefferson County Democrats in 1992. That year, the four county-wide
candidates, two for County Commission, one for Treasurer and one for District
Attorney, had sent a joint piece to all Democrat registrants. I called
each in turn, asking them "What is your position on the War on Drugs?"
After the treasurer candidate, Joe Beaver, answered me without hesitation,
"I'm against it!" I started contributing and attending meetings.

In 1994, more from idealism than from common sense, I ended up in a primary
for the Colorado 6th US Congressional District nomination. I lost, but
had a lot of fun. Although most of the other Democrats running for various
offices hated the War on Drugs, they were mostly too scared to say so.
My campaign manager hit on the idea of making half-height signs for my
campaign and attaching them to the posts of the yard signs of my fellow
Democrats who secretly opposed the War on Drugs. When the owners of the
commandeered signage squawked publicly, we made fools of them in the press
by means of the irony of the situation. The Denver daily newspapers lapped
up the humorous impasse like cats in cream.

By 1998, I had made enough progress with consciousness raising that the
Democrats nominated me to run for the state legislature in a "lost"
house district with a strong Republican incumbent. Conducting my campaign
with impeccable manners, my opponent and I were quickly good friends and
actually worked together to defeat a pernicious proposed constitutional
amendment disguised as a school voucher measure which promised to pay
more out of the treasury than was actually taken in. Naturally, I lost
the legislative seat to the seasoned professional, but gained status in
the Democratic party by a good electoral showing which laid to rest the
argument that an anti-drug-war candidature would bring opprobrium on the
party itself.

By 2000, the braver Democratic public officials were ready to speak out
in varying degrees about the War on Drugs. State Senator Ed Perlmutter
and State Representative Penfield Tate spoke at our May demonstration
at the state Capitol last year. The US Rep Mark Udall of Boulder voted
against the Colombia aid package in 2000, one of only 69 US reps to do
so, and spoke out on that subject when I introduced him before an audience
of Green Party aficionados shortly before last November.

Nevertheless, Monday morning I'll go down to the "Taj Mahal",
as we Jefferson County voters call the elaborate palace which is the seat
of our county government, and change my registration to the Republican
Party. What has changed, you might well ask?

The answer is that there is a tide in the affairs of man. There is a
hump in the road I can't quite push the Democrats over. Let me tell you
about it.

The past few years in America have been rife with what can only be termed
human rights crime committed by the authorities in the name of the War
on Drugs. The Ramparts scandal in Los Angeles in particular comes to mind,
but it's endemic across our nation. When I campaigned in 1994 in lovely
suburban Jefferson County, my set speech warned that the abuses of the
War on Drugs were not going to stay confined to the coastal urban areas,
nor to the Denver Metro area, but were going to spread into Jefferson
County.

It has begun. For example, the police
in Lakewood, Colorado accidentally burned down a house in a drug raid
and the city pled "sovereign immunity" and refused to pay
compensation. I went to my honorable Democratic elected friends and insisted
they speak up. It seemed no great leap to me. But here I met with resistance.
I had noticed that there was some gingerness in handling affairs of this
type, but I felt we had the authorities dead to rights. They were claiming,
in effect, that they had the sovereign right to torch a residence as a
prelude to a drug raid. But rather than raise fear in drug felons, the
City of Lakewood had managed to intimidate Democrats. The Democrat elected
officials would not cross the invisible line and admit that human rights
crimes were occurring in Jefferson County. It's all very well, it seemed
to them, to call mildly for solutions other than imprisonment, or to advocate
an unspecified shift in policy, but confronting the devil on the doorstep
was more than I could ask of them, despite having warned them for several
years of his satanic majesty's imminent arrival.

I began to re-examine my affiliation with the Democrats. What did they
stand for? After all these years, I didn't know. They don't know either.
At one time liberalism stood for a break for the common man. Now it seems
to stand for zero-tolerance policies in our children's schools and for
preventing affordable housing in e-wealthy suburban communities. I was
raised to believe that the Democratic Party stood for freedom, but over
the years watching my Democratic friends introduce one intrusive snoopervision
bill after another into the Colorado Assembly, I'm forced to admit that
if they have one consistent principle, it's "More Power to Nanny
Government." Pfaugh.

So I began to look at other parties. The Greens? I love 'em, but they're
largely a bunch of spandex-suited jet-setters with impractical positions
against free world trade. The Libertarians? True friends in the battle
against the War on Drugs, yet they are mostly hair-shirted prophets in
the wilderness whose self-respect demands that no-one ever prove them
wrong by actually electing them to any significant office.

Within the spectrum of Colorado electoral politics that leaves only the
Republicans. I like Republican Ben Nighthorse Campbell well enough, with
whom I have had several heart-to-hearts about the issue. Nighthorse, when
he's not busy in the US Senate, rides his Harley with the Hell's Angels
and manufactures turquoise jewelry with his own hands. He also has personally
subdued felons in the Washington, DC Metro more than once. Then there's
the new Secretary of the Interior, Gale Norton, who as Colorado Attorney
General disbanded the AG's Civil Forfeiture Unit on civil liberties grounds.
Recently I've been meeting with US Representative Tom "Tank"
Tancredo, who before he was in office, was head of the Independence Institute
of Golden, Colorado, which regularly and vociferously condemns the War
on Drugs on libertarian and economic grounds. Of course, "Tank"
has been a bit less vocal since he crossed the Potomac.

Aye, there's the rub: Ideals are for those of us who live north, south
and west of Foggy Bottom. Once ensconced in the federal capital, all bow
the knee to Big Policy in one form or other.

So Monday I'll go with the Republicans. I won't be going for their leadership;
I am sure the Republican leaders are of moral caliber equally equivocal
to that of the Democrats.

No, I'm going for the people. I was wrong to narrowly associate myself,
in pursuit of policy reform, with only 1/2 of the electorate. Now I am
meeting the other half, and, do you know, they are just as charming and
human as the half I've been associated with as a Democrat. And if they
mean what they say when they endorse individual liberty, personal responsibility
and the sanctity of property rights, I may just have found the platform
I can run on as a drug policy reformer.

Jack J. Woehr is a computer programmer living in Fairmount, Colorado
who has been active in the politics of drug policy reform since 1975.